Tuesday, January 08, 2008

My Kindred Spirit........................

When I moved here to beautiful Monterey, I moved to #1 Surf Way. It's an elite group of condos on Del Monte Beach. My two siamese cats would spend ALL DAY long sitting in my living room window staring at the waves crashing against the beach.

The really cool thang about living at Del Monte Beach is that it was about a mile away from the actual spot where Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar at the MPF 1967 (the real one)

And I feel it every time I drive down fremont blvd a block away from the fairgrounds stage. I can feel the tension of Jimi and Pete Townsend arguing over who was going to go on first. Many places here have pictures of Jime buying food from the street vendors outside the fairgrounds. You see Jimi was just like me. He was at that "Almost Famous" stage of his career. He wasn't getting free meals everywhere until after his ass kicking performance the put Jimi on the Rock and Roll Map forever. I know this sounds really corny; but, everytime I gig here and play Purple Haze as my encore, I can almost feel the spirit of Jimi going, "come on Ace; let me play that guitar". It's sad too, because I have a beautiful white strat just like Jimi's that I use to bounce on the stage at the end of PH. And like Jimi's strat, the sumbitch won't stay in tune. I think it's time for a Floyd Rose with a locking nut.

But seriously, I pick up my prescriptions at the long's drug store just a block from the stage where The Who, Jefferson Airplane, The Animals, Johnny Rivers (who lives here) The mama's and papas (who recorded on my first album) and others like Ravi Shankar and Huge Masekala made history.

Jimi had huge success in England. When he was playing in Greenwich village in New York, Chas Chandler of the Animals approached Jimi and asked him to come back with the Animals to England where he hooked him up with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. It's very interesting to note that my friend Leo Lyons the bassist from Ten Years After was approached by Chandler first to be Jimi's Bassist. Cool..... But Leo was devoted to the Great Alvin Lee and went on to make their own history as the band that kicked everyone's ass at Woodstock. (the real one)

And living here where the summer of love was born has had a cool effect on my music. We (my band) play classics from the MPF concert but do it in our own heavy metal sound and people just love it. Listen to California Dreamin on my first album. You'll know what I'm talking about.

If I can just get Johnny Rivers to record on my next album "Spies, Lies, and Alibis" with me. IT would be so cool, almost like Monterey coming full circle. Forget the aquarium, Monterey is about Rock and Roll History. They should have built the R&R hall of fame here. The smoke from Jimi's strat is still in the air.

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About Me

The Café Americain is back open. Thank you for being patient while I was on Sabbatical. But I am turning the Café into a no holds barred Road House. Please feel free to comment. Hit me with your best shot. It may not get posted but you can try.